1. Scope of Invention
This invention relates generally to dietary devices, and more particularly to a device and method for estimating the percentage of calories from fat contained within food products.
2. Prior Art
After becoming extremely overweight in previous generations, there has been a growing trend toward reversing that situation. As a result, health food, dietary supplements and weight loss food products, programs, ingredients and dietary aids have been proliferated throughout our society.
To assist consumers in understanding both minimum dietary needs and how packaged food products affect those dietary needs, recent legislation has required that the nutritional content of packaged foods be clearly displayed in simple and concise terms on packaging. Two of the values which provide some level of information to the consumer as to the potential weight gain or loss benefits from consuming that food product are the fat content by weight, e.g. in grams (gms.) and the total number of calories per serving. Although these numbers can be somewhat useful to a knowledgeable consumer, nonetheless separate from other nutritional information, these fat and calorie content values per serving are not sufficient to advise the consumer as to the true weight gain or weight loss nature of that food product.
A normal, healthy body of normal weight consists of approximately twenty percent (20%) fat by weight. With this as a basic understanding, nutritionists and dietitians have come to realize that fat content of food products, rather than total calorie content, is more determinative of whether that food product will result in weight gain, weight loss or neither. Thus, for weight loss purposes, the emphasis has turned from calorie content and calorie counting to a focus upon the amount of fat contained in a food product.
Although guidelines have been set establishing the maximum range of fat by weight recommended for daily consumption, i.e. 30-40 grams, keeping a daily tally of grams of fat consumed is difficult at best based upon the current level of nutritional information on food packaging.
A most useful interpretation for weight loss or gain purposes has come to be known as the percent of calories from fat. This is tied in with the earlier discussion of the normal percentage of body fat, i.e. about twenty to thirty percent. If an individual consumes food which has a percentage of calories from fat of in the range of twenty to thirty percent or less, either weight maintenance or weight loss will occur. On the other hand, if food contained a percentage of calories from fat of in excess: of twenty to thirty percent, weight gain can be expected.
Two factors need to be known to make this determination. The first is the total amount of calories contained in a food serving. The second factor is the total amount of fat by weight (gms.) contained in that food serving. Both of these factors are now required to be on all food packaging. To calculate the percentage of calories from fat in that food serving, the fat content by weight must be converted to calories and then compared to the total number of calories in the serving.
To make this conversion from fat weight (gms.) to fat calories, all that is needed is the number of calories contained in a gram of fat, i.e. approximately nine (9) calories per gram. Armed with this factor then, the formula for determining the percent of calories from fat is as follows: ##EQU1##
There appears to be nothing currently available, however, which will aid the consumer in quickly and easily determining whether a particular packaged food product will result in weight gain or loss. That is to say, there is no convenient way to make this calculation of percent of calories from fat based upon the printed nutritional information on the food packaging as one travels through a food market.
The present invention provides such a device which incorporates the above nutritional information into a simple, interactive two component device which provides indicia thereon for determining the percent calories from fat without having to manipulate devices such as a slide rule or a pocket calculator.